Hunky young college refugee arrives from points east, pays dues for a few years doing odd jobs, finally making a splash with shirt off and pecs bulging in a film otherwise dominated by women. Brad Pitt in "Thelma & Louise," sure, but the description also applies to "How to Make an American Quilt's" Johnathon Schaech, a fast-rising 26-year-old actor whose looks and talent have gained the attention of some heavy Hollywood hitters.

Maybe we should scratch movie stardom from our list of career goals. After all, nobody said anything about having to flirt with the grim reaper, the least attractive prospect on any girl's dance card. That job tip comes courtesy of the dedicated and toothsome Johnathon Schaech. The star of TNT's upcoming "Houdini" is still with us--vertically, that is--thanks to the magic of movie crews, who pulled him out of a Chinese water torture chamber before he was beyond pain.

Maybe we should scratch movie stardom from our list of career goals. After all, nobody said anything about having to flirt with the grim reaper, the least attractive prospect on any girl's dance card. That job tip comes courtesy of the dedicated and toothsome Johnathon Schaech. The star of TNT's upcoming "Houdini" is still with us--vertically, that is--thanks to the magic of movie crews, who pulled him out of a Chinese water torture chamber before he was beyond pain.

Hunky young college refugee arrives from points east, pays dues for a few years doing odd jobs, finally making a splash with shirt off and pecs bulging in a film otherwise dominated by women. Brad Pitt in "Thelma & Louise," sure, but the description also applies to "How to Make an American Quilt's" Johnathon Schaech, a fast-rising 26-year-old actor whose looks and talent have gained the attention of some heavy Hollywood hitters.

In the young and the restless vampire escapade "The Forsaken," gore and guts spill onto the screen in giddy profusion--it's a slice of life, viscera and all. Putting a sardonic, postmodern kick on the undead-from-the-crypt horror trip, director-writer J.S. Cardone (whose credits include "Outside Ozona," "Black Day Blue Night," and "A Climate for Killing") maneuvers his cast of ravishing kids--many from the teen TV world--through the ravages of ghoulish possession.

With four features in the past six years, Gregg Araki has established himself as one of America's most gifted and provocative filmmakers, chronicling the lives of young people sometimes uncertain of their sexual orientation, most always unsure of what to do with their lives. "Totally F***ed Up" tackled teen suicide head-on and, before that, "The Living End" found two very different HIV-positive young men working out a relationship while on the road.

It starts out on a riff from the John Lee Hooker song "Boom Boom." And tonight's "Blood Crime" (8 p.m., USA) could use the second line from that blues classic for its tag line: "Gonna shoot you right down!"Yes, this first of USA Network's Crime Fridays original movie offerings has plenty of shooting and bad guys; unfortunately, it's the plot that falls dead{mdash}the victim of a criminal lack of common sense.The film starts off well enough with the de rigueur shootout.

"Prom Night" has a listed running time of 85 minutes, and that's really the only good thing there is to say about it. (It only feels like it goes on for hours and hours.) Otherwise this is as listless, mindless and utterly useless a piece of corporate brain-clog as one is likely to come across for quite some time.

The Scene: A crowd of about 2,000 poured into Century City's very '80s-looking Cineplex Odeon Century Plaza on Monday night for the premiere of Tom Hanks' writing and directorial debut, 20th Century Fox's "That Thing You Do," which opens this weekend. It was an anachronistic choice of venue, considering this is a period film chronicling the trajectory in the early '60s of a fictional one-hit-wonder band called The Wonders.

Tom Hanks understands likable. More than that, he practically owns the quality. Now, with blithe assurance and considerable success he's transferred title over to "That Thing You Do!," his cheerful and high-spirited debut as a writer-director. That's harder to do than it sounds, because likable is a step from sappy and sentimental, a morass that Hanks deftly avoids. Good-humored and just about reeking of innocence, "That Thing You Do!"

It's probably not the filmmaker's fault that "Hush" is being peddled as a family-pathology slasher film, like "The Stepfather" or "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle." Still, the prospect of catching Jessica Lange in a late-period Bette Davis role, as a smother-mother gargoyle, is bound to attract some unwary thrill-seekers. And they are bound to be disappointed. "Hush" is a would-be suspense film without a single major plot twist that isn't ham-handed.